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Open Letter From It’s Showtime Owner Simon Rutz Condemns New K-1 Organization, Praises GLORY World Series

Following Saturday’s shocking news that GLORY World Series had acquired kickboxing competitor It’s Showtime, the latter’s owner and longtime kickboxing pioneer Simon Rutz, issued an open letter explaining the reasons for the sale of his league to GLORY. In the letter, Rutz also offered his perspective on GLORY’s competitor, the reincarnation of legendary kickboxing brand K-1.

Here is the letter, in its entirety:

Explanation take-over of IT’S SHOWTIME by Glory Sports International.

Saturday, June 30, 2012, I made an announcement during the IT’S SHOWTIME event in Brussels that we have sold the company IT’S SHOWTIME to Glory Sports International. Glory Sports International is the holding company of Glory.

There were different reasons for us for this sale. First of all, for a long time we had been regretting the fact that not all good kickboxers were in 1 league, and for that reason, the kickboxing fans didn’t get to see a lot of potential great fights. At IT’S SHOWTIME, we were also deeply impressed by the positive plans of Glory Sports International to give our sport a massive impulse. Their very open and positive attitude towards us have brought our companies closer to each other in the past months.

The financial injection which Glory Sports International wants to give to our sport is historical, and no obstacles are left which could prevent Glory from being the absolute number 1 in the kickboxing industry. In fact, Glory could even set or raise the bar on various other areas.

In February of 2012, we have made agreements with Mr. Mike Kim of K-1 to help him bringing the K-1 back to the top of the game, and we would get paid for this help. We also helped the K-1 to sign fighters and we have introduced them to a local promoter in Madrid in order to set up the K-1 event last May.

Of all the daring plans Mr. Kim told us, nothing became reality. The fighters of the event last May still haven’t received their money. Once again, the fighters won’t get paid (only Badr Hari and Mirko Filipovic demanded to be paid in advance). The local promoter in Madrid disbursed money for the K-1 and even this company won’t get that money back after hundreds of emails. Therefore, the local promoter will take these matters to court.
Also, but less important, K-1 again didn’t live up to the financial agreements they have made with our company, so they breached the contract.

Mr. Kim doesn’t even pay his own Japanese employees and therefore they are leaving the K-1 now. Even though K-1 announced a 1 million dollar jackpot for the winner of the K-1 World Grand Prix Final, Mr. Kim won’t give a bank guarantee for this jackpot. We think he simply isn’t able to come up with a bank guarantee because there isn’t enough money available. I firmly believe that Mr. Kim took a big risk concerning the take-over of the K-1 brand. He assumed that he would find a co-investor or that he could sell the brand/logo with a big profit. There just isn’t any longterm vision with K-1. After all these issues, we lost our faith in the new K-1, an organization that hasn’t brought us what they promised us. Even the events in the U.S. are far from sure to happen.

All these facts combined have made us at IT’S SHOWTIME decide to take the only and right step by supporting Glory for 100%. The take-over means that from now on, all personnel of IT’S SHOWTIME will use its knowledge to help bringing Glory to where we think it will go.

Together with Bert van der Ryd, I will be busy with the production of the Glory events. For other activities within Glory, the best specialists in the world are, or will be, signed.
Currently, it’s not 100% sure yet whether there will be only Glory events in the future, or also events under the IT’S SHOWTIME label. This will be decided soon. However, the event which is scheduled for July 21 on Tenerife, Spain, will take place.

One thing is for sure: because of this take-over, the fighters and the fans will be the big winners. The fighters will get more opportunities to fight at more events, and the fans will get to see all good fighters against each other.

I am in the lucky position that I only have to do what’s closest to my heart: producing events. This, together with the professional Glory staff, gives me the belief that it’s now Glory time.

For more information www.gloryworldseries.com

Kind regards,

Simon Rutz

posted by FCF Staff @ 11:52 am

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